The Natural Golf Swing (14 page)

T
HE FINISHING FORM
is one in which you face the target at natural, full height. Your body faces the target – feet, knees, hips, shoulders, torso, shoulders, and head – and all of your weight is on your left foot. There’s a natural flex in your left knee, while your right knee is also flexed. Your right foot, having shifted forward due to the weight transfer to your left foot, has come up.

Given that you have not controlled the club at all during the motion, it will now flow where it may, probably completing its travels somewhere behind your back. We don’t care where it goes; centrifugal force carries the club until it has spent its energy. At the same time, the hands and wrists are in the same form as at the start.

I once asked a thirteen-year-old gymnast in Halifax why she committed herself so fully to her sport. “Because I feel so free when I do it,” she answered. And that’s a feeling you will have as you move through to assume the proper finishing form. You can’t help but notice the feeling of freedom as you let yourself go to the finish.

The finishing position, all the weight on the left foot.

You’re following through on every linked aspect of the motion that came before. Not that you’re trying to. You know the difference between trying and enabling, between forcing and allowing. You’re going along for the ride.

It’s important to understand that the finishing position is truly a
form
. It’s true that you get to the position by allowing the motion to take place. But you also help yourself immeasurably in reaching the position by having a picture of the form in your mind’s eye from the beginning. Now that you understand the motion, you can appreciate why it’s critical that you visualize from the beginning the form you will assume at the end. As I said earlier with respect to the positioning of the left foot, it’s important to know where you’re going if you plan to arrive there.

Where are you going? What do you want to visualize? How will you look?

You are moving to a point where you will stand with one hundred per cent of your weight on your left foot, your body facing the target in perfect balance. It makes sense that you
are moving to this position. If you’re moving forward by transferring weight to the left foot, then you want to let all the weight go. Anything else suggests restriction; and this is an imbalance. Instead, you intend to let all the energy go.

Top
, transferring the weight to the left foot.
Bottom
, the right foot at the finish.

Let’s look more closely at the by-the-way, involuntary happenings that take place as you move to the finishing position. The more confident you feel that these happen on their own due to the natural swing motion, the more easily you will let it all happen.

First, your left elbow folds midway toward the finishing position as the heaviness in the mass pulls you along and around to face the target. Your commitment to face the target will pull your right leg slightly forward. This is because your intent is to transfer one hundred per cent of your weight to your left foot in order to conform to the principle of balance. Your right foot will just be hanging at the finishing position. You won’t miss
this position if you have made a total weight transfer. Your right leg will slide forward as all of your weight moves to the left foot, and will stabilize at a point halfway to your right foot. Since you are moving to a position of full height in which all of your weight is on your left foot, your right foot will also come up. At the finish your right foot will, as indicated, hang. This is a clear indication that you have shifted all your weight forward, and that you have indeed moved from one pivot point – the
right foot – to the other pivot point – the left foot. At the same time, your right knee will move forward and then in toward the left knee. It will finish beside your left knee; they will nearly touch one another. These positions cannot help but come about if you are in balance. You will get to these positions if the form is right.

Various finish positions for different shots, all in balance.

What about the golf club? It’s simply gone off on its own path. The club will, as mentioned, likely travel to a point behind your back. This is an automatic response. You’ll recall that the arms, hands, and wrists have remained passive from the start, and that you began while holding the golf club in front of you. You haven’t severed the connections you started with. The club has travelled all the way around with your body. You haven’t interfered with it. Just let the club go where it’s going to go. It’s the body form that counts. When you’re finished, having been in balance throughout, you’ll be standing in a perfectly relaxed form. Your arms will have dropped to the desirable and relaxed recessed position. I like to call this position the “best seat in the house.” This is the place from where you evaluate your form and enjoy the result. Eventually your arms will get to the desirable and relaxed recessed position.

You must evaluate your finishing form. Many golfers pay some attention to their starting form, but few have a good look at the finishing form. They think that because the ball has been struck, the swing is over. So why bother examining the finishing form?

Evaluation of the finishing form.

The way you finish can give you many clues as to how you arrived there. That’s why I want you to take a good look. It’s easier to do so if you allow your arms to drop to a recessed position in front of your chest. They will have travelled along with the club to a point above or slightly behind your left shoulder. If you’re relaxed, then your arms will drop naturally to the recessed position. This happens no matter what type of shot you are playing. There are times that you may not go all the way to the finishing position you reach on a full swing; this happens, for instance, when you hit less than a full shot. But the club still has a mind of its own. Momentum determines the breadth of the motion. We don’t control it.

You can now evaluate. Where is your weight? Is it all on your front foot? Have you held anything back? Do you feel yourself tilting right or left? If you do, this means you didn’t transfer your weight evenly on to your left foot; all your weight should be evenly distributed across your foot if you are in balance. Similarly, notice if you have rolled to the outside of your left foot, or if you didn’t reach the position where one hundred per cent of your weight should be. Either condition means that you set up improperly. Check the angle of the left foot relative to the target. This determines direction. Also check the location of the left foot relative to the left shoulder. The left foot must be outside the left shoulder to establish proper balance.

It’s important to evaluate after each swing motion. Are you in balance? Are you in natural height? Are you facing the target? Have you maintained the hand and wrist formation? I got to the point where I knew it if I was just a hair out of balance. You
can
become that sensitive. You
can
get to the point when it will shock you if you do something to disturb balance. It won’t be something you have to look for. You will
know
it.

I want to stress the importance of evaluation of your finishing form. It really does complete the motion. It turns every swing motion into a separate learning opportunity. It’s the best way to achieve that much-sought-after state of concentrating on each shot and playing one shot at a time. It helps put you into a concentrated state. It also reduces anxiety by taking your mind off the result. It’s not what you do that counts. It’s what you attempt to do.

We’re concerned with the long run. That’s why we evaluate each swing motion. We intend to play golf for a long time, and so we take the long-term view. Paradoxically, we facilitate a long-term view by evaluating each and every swing motion, one at a time. Then we forget it. We learn as we go along because we are not interfering with the learning process by interjecting value judgments. It’s simply evaluation, integration of information, and then onto the next swing motion. It takes time to learn and change. And so we give ourselves time.

Ben Hogan was a brilliant evaluator. He assessed each swing very carefully. He wanted to give himself the best chance of not making the same mistake again, or, conversely, of doing the right thing again. Every swing is an object lesson. Every swing that you evaluate is an opportunity gained. Every swing that you don’t evaluate is an opportunity lost.

Evaluation and assessment are crucial. These procedures help make golf a logical game. We learn where our good and bad shots come from.

You’ve now learned the starting and finishing forms. You’ve learned the means of motion and the laws and principles that apply. You understand the swing as a motion. You know that golf is a target game.

In the next chapter I’d like to go through many of the misconceptions we’ve absorbed over the years. They have no place in the natural swing. You can now appreciate that if an idea, tip, or theory disturbs balance, then it has no place in golf.